HR Horror Stories

Below are just a couple of examples. The writers have asked to remain anonymous, but are all solution providers.

Be Careful Who You Hire
About four years ago we added a gentleman to our sales team. He was brought on-board like all of our other employees with a verbal agreement regarding salary and compensation.

Well, the first couple years went by and he made some sales. He was learning the products and the marketplace. Everything was progressing, so he was even given a raise to his base salary. In the third year, sales began to slow down and his attitude seemed to change. It became very apparent that he was not happy in his position. He complained a lot about other staff members and other departments. He began losing almost every sale he was on, but of course he had an excuse. It was either the software was not a fit or the consultant did not do the demo well or something else.

During this time, some of the managers began to talk with him about the issues, but he did not see it as his problem. Management finally made some phone calls to the deals he lost and confirmed that he was not following up or really even trying to make the sales. After almost a year of no sales, the decision was made to let him go.

All of the accounts that he was working were turned over to other members of the sales team, and within 60 days eight new deals were closed. Somehow the fired salesperson learned about the deals and felt that he had helped with those deals and deserved to be compensated for them.

He filed a claim for unpaid commissions with the state labor board. In researching to defend against his claim, we discovered that he had been looking for a new job for over a year. He had been using his company e-mail to send out resumes and correspond with recruiters. He was also attempting to start his own business with his family and had many documents and e-mails on the corporate network. We even located e-mails where he sent leads to other companies that he was interviewing with.

During the time of the hearings, he also began calling into the customers that purchased after he left in an attempt to get them to testify for him. Obviously this was very disturbing to the customers.

Finally, because of the e-mails and other documents we were able to locate, we were able to successfully defend the claim, but it cost us not only attorney fees but countless hours of management time doing research and attending hearings.

Editor's Note: When asked about how many hours it took to defend against this action, this solution provider estimated 100 hours, including three hearings at the labor board, meetings with the attorney and research.

NEXT: A Midwest VAR learns the hard way the importance of clear job descriptions.

Hurt On The Job?
One of our employees hurt his back on a Saturday helping a friend move. Consider this occurred on the 1st of the month. The following Monday he began a week of training for a secondary job with our same company. As part of this job, the employee was lifting 25-pound computer displays. During the entire week of training, the employee never mentioned any back pain to fellow employees. He finally went to a doctor on the following Saturday, the 8th of the month, following his training week.

On the 10th of the month, he called into work stating the doctor wanted him home on bed rest for a week. A week later, he called in with the same doctor's excuse. At that time, the employee was informed it was OK to take the time off, but he would not be paid for that week because he had used up his sick time the week before. At that point, the employee stated his injury occurred at work and filed a claim for workers' compensation.

Several co-workers, however, confirmed that this employee had told them he had lost his footing while helping someone move a couch over a weekend --on personal time -- and hurt his back. The story was also confirmed by a neighbor.

Our company invested more than 100 hours plus attorney's fees to fight this employee through three long appeals. The employee's claim was denied each time. There are two key lessons here. One, we failed to state in the employee job description that he would be lifting 25-pound items as part of the job. That may not have eliminated the initial claim filing, but it would have reduced the employee's ability to support some of his claims. And two, this employee told co-workers he hurt his back over the weekend yet none of them stopped him from lifting the displays or reported his personal injury to a manager. Teach your employees not to allow co-workers to work in a manner that might strain an existing physical injury. A manager should be notified prior to any potentially inappropriate work begins. Document the situation. You may decide the person cannot do that type of work.

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